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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

How- To: Make a Bubble Mailer

Hi Everyone! I just wanted to shoot off a quick little DIY trick to extend the use of bubble mailers and bubble wrap to make simple and fun packaging.

I have a stacks of all kinds of leftover materials and the things that I have a real soft spot for putting to good use is plastic packaging. One of the reasons I try to aim for zero waste is I can't even feel good about purchasing something wrapped and covered in miles of plastic. Since we live far away from friends and family, especially at the holidays, we get a ton of mail/ packages. I put aside foam sheets and bubble wrap in an area where we store all of our packaging supplies incase we need them to ship something, sometimes there is just a ton around the house :(

Using saved paper I made the shipping envelope shown, but you can do this with a brown-paper grocery bags for the outside. I have these discarded file folders that I use to make a quick template. You can use any type of heaver paper or mark directly on the paper you are using. You can make the finished size whatever measurement you'd like, but common sizes you can make are 8 1/2" X 11 1/4" or 6 3/4" X 9 1/4" for smaller items.

In the first picture I attached the files together to have a big enough template to work with. The picture to the right is making the full measurements including the flap and the area at the middle where the bubble sheet meets.

Above, I cut two sheets of the bubble mailer and lightly tacked it in place with a glue stick. You can see the full piece of blank paper in the second picture. This paper came from a friends furniture delivery and it has the look of handmade paper. I really like how it has a reddish side and a grey side.

Then I just zig-zag stitched the sides together matching the bubble wrapped insides flush on both sides. Make sure that you have a decent sized lip measured into you envelope so you can enclose everything nice and secure for mailing.

Well, I thought I would pass a long this quick little tip before sending off this mailer filled with goodies to the winner of the Paperwork at the Office section on the Team EcoEtsy Auction :)

1 comment:

Whoever said that you cannot put some fun in packing is definitely wrong! If I received this mailer, I would surely keep it. And I think it is also a way to put a little excitement in snail mail. You can even add some personal touches, if you want to. [Clay Delgado ]

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